Eighty years ago, the revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent. Unlike many other revolutionaries, who have been robbed of their true political ideas and depicted as harmless idols after their deaths, Trotsky’s legacy lives on today. Wherever his name is mentioned, he polarizes. His opponents — defenders of capitalism, fascists, but also today’s Stalinists — absolutely hate him; his followers vigorously defend him.
But this defense is not only limited to the life he lived. Above all it refers to his work, analysis, and method that guided him. Trotsky was a virtuoso of materialist dialectics. Learning from Trotsky does not mean to learn rigid formulas and dogmas by heart; it means to consider all things in their complexity, to be attentive to changing conditions, to accept mistakes when they’re made and to learn from them.
Trotsky was a virtuoso of materialist dialectics. Learning from Trotsky does not mean to learn rigid formulas and dogmas by heart; it means to consider all things in their complexity, to be attentive to changing conditions, to accept mistakes when they’re made and to learn from them.
Permanent Revolution
Perhaps the most important addition of Trotsky to Marxist thought developed following the 1905 Revolution in Russia. Russian workers had been fighting against brutal Tsarist rule, for social justice as well as democratic rights such as freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and free elections — i.e. rights that were previously won in the great bourgeois revolutions in France and England. But despite heroic battles by the workers, this first Russian Revolution was beaten back.
Trotsky, himself a central actor in the events, drew an unprecedented conclusion from the defeat. He broke with the then popular revolutionary idea that a country must follow the example of France or England: first, have a successful bourgeois revolution, with the bourgeoisie at its head; second, only after some time, when an advanced capitalist regime has developed, can the struggle for socialism be waged.
Trotsky recognized that the Russian bourgeoisie of the 20th century, unlike the English or French in the centuries before, had no material interest in a bourgeois revolution. By the early 20th century, bourgeois-capitalist property and production relations were already predominant on a global scale, and in Russia had largely been implemented from above. This process of “capitalism from above” therefore put the Russian bourgeoisie from the very beginning in harmony with the existing Tsarist regime and therefore no need existed, for example, for land reform, one of the tasks of a typical bourgeois revolutions.
Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution” explained that in such a situation, the working-class had to act independently to fulfil the democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution but also the desperately needed land reform, even against the will of the bourgeoisie. Once having overthrown the Tsar and feudalism, the working-class would immediately turn to the task of its own emancipation through socialism — since it was the only class in whose material interest such a revolution would be. This would not be separated into different stages, first a bourgeois revolution, then sometime later a socialist revolution, but would occur as part of an uninterrupted, a permanent process.
Against the background of the revolutionary events of 1917, Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and Lenin’s organization came together: although Trotsky did not formally join the Bolsheviks until a few months later, Lenin’s “April Theses” came to the same conclusions as Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. When they first heard Lenin’s approach, the other leading Bolsheviks, above all Stalin, thought Lenin was crazy. It was preposterous to call for the necessity of seizing power through the proletariat in an undeveloped country like Russia, they thought. October later proved Lenin and Trotsky right.
Life as a Revolutionary
Throughout his life, wherever Trotsky was politically active, he played a leading role. In the 1905 revolutions and again in 1917 he was chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet. After 1917 he was, among other things, People’s Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and founder of the Red Army. In this capacity he led the revolutionary workers and peasants against imperialist armies and Tsarist generals, who wanted to overthrow revolutionary Russia because it had dared to drive out its masters.
This civil war weakened the country enormously and destroyed many of the best communists, allowing an opportunistic clique around Stalin to move into positions of power in the following years. In the last 15 years of his life, Trotsky led a determined struggle against this bureaucratic degeneration. At the same time, he was the first to warn of the disastrous potential of fascism.
But instead of taking these warnings seriously, Stalinism branded every possible threat to its bureaucracy as Trotskyism — and thus fought to get rid of the best and most sincere fighters of the October Revolution. The greatest opponent here was, of course, Trotsky himself. In addition to destroying his writings, removing him from both history books and photographs, Trotsky’s relationship with Lenin was also distorted.
Lenin and Trotsky, the two leaders of the October Revolution were not always in agreement. After the split of the Russian Social Democracy into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, their relationship was clouded because at the time Trotsky did not yet understand the scope of this division. Despite their differences of opinion before 1917, however, they were never far apart politically — Trotsky was much closer to the Bolsheviks than to the reformist Mensheviks — and both had the courage to admit they could and had made mistakes.
Explaining Stalinism
Trotsky rejected the common superficial patterns of explanation for the emergence of Stalinism: the dictatorship was not simply the work of a villain, nor was it the inevitable consequence of the revolution and policies of Lenin, as bourgeois history books like to claim.
Trotsky rejected the common superficial patterns of explanation for the emergence of Stalinism: the dictatorship was not simply the work of a villain, nor was it the inevitable consequence of the revolution and policies of Lenin, as bourgeois history books like to claim.
When the Bolsheviks led the October Revolution, they were aware that while the revolution was taking place in Russia, it had to be completed in Germany and the rest of Europe. Without the international revolution, the Russian revolution would be lost. In fact, towards the end of the war a revolutionary wave was unleashed. But nowhere else was the revolution successful — it was either brutally beaten back and massacred, as in Germany and Hungary, or “hugged to death” as in Austria. In both scenarios, the social democratic parties played a central role in preventing the success of the revolution.
The young Soviet republic remained isolated — and immediately faced an invasion of numerous military units of the imperialist armies. Despite the offer of peace from revolutionary Russia, World War 1 was not over for the imperialists. They now wanted to bring down the Russian revolution, together with the overthrown Tsarist military. A years-long bloody civil war was the consequence, which the Bolsheviks and their allies won in part thanks to the self-sacrifice of countless revolutionaries. The revolution survived — but was badly mutilated. Not only had the economy fallen victim to the isolation and war, but also democracy in the soviets and in the party.
In his analysis of Stalinism, Trotsky built on Marx and Engels. He pointed out that for the development of socialism, the abundance in society must be on a level equal with that produced in developed capitalism, because otherwise “want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced.” — Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: The German Ideology.
But according to Trotsky, exactly this happened in Russia after the failure of the international revolution. This was the basis for the rise of the bureaucratic dictatorship, headed by Stalin: “The social demand for a bureaucracy arises in all those situations where sharp antagonisms need to be ‘softened’, ‘adjusted’, ‘regulated’ (always in the interests of the privileged, the possessors, and always to the advantage of the bureaucracy itself)”. – Revolution Betrayed. Trotsky saw the only way out of the situation was through revolution, including a political revolution in the Soviet Union.
Trotsky’s Ideas Today
Trotsky’s theories, particularly the need for working-class political independence, are not only useful for analyzing the past. They still apply to many central issues today, for example in the fight against the climate crisis. Not only is capitalism the central cause of climate change, but the interests of the fossil fuel sections of capital mean there are real constraints for bourgeois parties. In Austria, just as one example, the Greens came into a coalition in 2019 after running a pro-environment campaign. As soon as they started sharing power, however, they quickly distanced themselves from their demands on the fossil fuel industry.
Trotsky’s fight against fascism was also guided by the same train of thought: the respective material interests of the classes are the linchpin of the analysis. Trotsky recognized in fascism a special form of bourgeois-capitalist reaction to a severe crisis of the economic and political system. The bourgeoisie unleashed fascism in order to secure their profits. Via a mass base in the petty bourgeoisie (e.g. small traders) and lumpenproletariat (e.g. long-term unemployed) fascism tried to eliminate any form of workers’ organization. Trotsky’s conclusion: the bourgeoisie cannot be an ally in the fight against fascism because the capitalists and their system provides the basis for it.
That the bourgeoisie is open to the radical right, when it comes to securing profits and investments, can still be observed today. The German newspaper “Handelsblatt”, for example, ran this headline after the election of Bolsonaro: “German economy celebrates the ‘Trump of the Tropics’’.
How can we fight against radical right politics today? We’ve recently seen a number of high-profile political figures, particularly Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the US, who put forward somewhat radical left-wing platforms that gained substantial support. But while they encouraged workers to volunteer to distribute leaflets and show up to rallies, the thrust of their politics was to get elected in order to make change. They tried to achieve change “for” working people inside of parties supporting different sections of capital, rather than organizing “with” working people to build the structures necessary to fundamentally change society. When it came down to it, the parties representing capital were always going to block them.
A small example of the kind of class politics we need was seen recently in Minneapolis, following the police murder of African-American George Floyd. Two days after his murder, the police ordered the local bus authority Metro Transit to send two buses to assist the police with their suppression and arrest of protesters. This was not opposed by the local Democratic Party, which controls the city of Minneapolis. But acting quickly, the union bus drivers, sparked by Socialist Alternative member Adam Burch, refused to drive the buses; in effect, organized action of the working-class was able to directly impact the ability of the capitalist state to repress protests. This once again highlighted the central role that workers can play in current struggles, and will necessarily play in the fight for socialism.
Trotsky’s Legacy
Even 80 years after his death, Leon Trotsky is not only a symbol of the indomitable struggle against capitalism, fascism and Stalinism, but also as a source of ideas for Marxists in class struggles and social movements worldwide.
Despite seeing the bureaucratization of the Soviet Union and his exile therefrom, the rise of fascism and slaughter of two World Wars, lying on his deathbed after being attacked by a Stalinist agent, Trotsky remained optimistic about a socialist future. In his last testament, he remarked: “Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.” — Testament of Leon Trotsky.
